The CRB will still be merged with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), in Darlington, to create the new Disclosure and Barring Service (DSB) next year.

However it has been confirmed that the DSB will operate from both the existing sites, rather than from just one – as the Home Office had suggested in February. The Home Office also expects all 700 CRB staff to keep their jobs – bar some cost-cutting changes at “executive management level”.

The rethink appears to flow from a realisation that there is little duplication in the work done by the CRB and the ISA.